Photo 365 #173

January 27, 201511 Comments

The snow we got over the weekend is now almost entirely gone, but that didn’t keep me from waking up to another white morning. Once again, the ground was covered in frost when I left for work, and once again, I found some pretty leaves to take pictures of:

I was surprised (in a good way) how well the frost crystals popped out in these pictures. These are the best of the dozen or so I snapped this morning after dropping my kids off at daycare, and I’m pretty tickled with them.

What’s tickled you lately?

Photo 365 #172

January 26, 20156 Comments

I’ve got nothing today – my brain appears to have shut down. Perhaps it still thinks it’s the weekend?

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.

So with that in mind, I hope you’ll enjoy this artsy picture of some of the bricks that make up a local courthouse. See you back here tomorrow, when hopefully I’ll have more on my mind than Pink Floyd.

Photo 365 #171

January 25, 2015January 26, 20154 Comments

Miss Tadpole and Bubbles had a 4-H meeting this afternoon and it was their turn to give the presentations. Naturally, they left them till the last minute, because who needs to prepare?

presentations

Since our ISP switch, though, we only have internet access on one computer – Seymour’s. It’s an inconvenience for sure, and when Miss Tadpole wanted to use the internet to look up information about the history of cats, we told her to look at the encyclopedia.

Her response?

“That doesn’t have history in it.”

*facepalm*

So I gave her a whirlwind introduction to the encyclopedia. Again. (Sadly, this is not the first time this conversation has happened in my house.) I showed her the index, explaining that it was “like Google, before Google was a thing.” Then I demonstrated how to use it to check out different keywords in her search (she wanted information on cats in ancient Egypt). Unfortunately, our encyclopedia was a bit lacking when it came to ancient Egyptian cats, but hopefully she learned that she doesn’t have to rely on the internet for everything.

And no, I’m not holding my breath that that particular lesson actually soaked in.

Still, it was a lot of fun looking through that old encyclopedia. Some of my most treasured memories involve summer afternoons at the library reading The World Book Encyclopedia.

Do you have any fun memories involving reference books of yore? Share ’em below – let’s reminisce! 🙂

Photo 365 #170

January 24, 20158 Comments

The grass yesterday morning crunched beneath my feet. Like snow. It was…interesting.

It was also quite pretty, so naturally, I took some pictures. Today it’s in the forties, so the ground is turning soggy. Mud’s just not as pretty as frost.

Photo 365 #169

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015Leave a comment

Much to Cricket’s chagrin, Thumper received a package in the mail yesterday. (For the record, Cricket was only annoyed because he didn’t get a package, too.) It was a late Christmas present from his godmother, and he was absolutely ecstatic:

2015-01-22 20.00.42

I’ve seen this before, and somewhere (in my office, I think) I have one of those wall decals that says the same thing. We all love it, and the plan is to get it hung this weekend. Thumper loves it so much that I think he’d have slept with it last night if we’d have let him; he started crying when we wouldn’t let him carry it upstairs.

Photo 365 #168: Revision time

January 22, 2015January 23, 2015Leave a comment

If you haven’t been following me on Twitter the last couple of days, I’m really ramping up my revision of The Price of Mercy.

revision

This was taken a while ago, but I forgot to snap a newer pic of my revisions this noon, so I went trawling through my archives. Some time after I took this, I gave up on marking up my hard copy and decided to go straight into rewrite mode. What that means is that I am literally recopying my hard draft, adding new things and fixing old things as the need arises.

When I started this revision, I’d chopped my book in half. That left me with a starting page count of ~154. The latest page count is 295, which means that I’ve done a heck of a lot of rewriting since I started this project! I still have a heck of a lot more to do, though, and I’m beginning to wonder if a fourth book won’t end up being necessary. Of course, if that’s the case, then I’ll start worrying that I won’t have enough material to fill a fourth book…

Being a writer is…

Photo 365 #167

January 21, 20154 Comments

climbermonkey Last night while I was cooking supper, I shot one of the pictures for yesterday’s post. Bubbles asked why I was taking a picture of toothpaste, so I told him about my photo-a-day-for-a-year project.

“Can you take my picture?” he asked.

I feel like I’ve covered this ground with him here already (Oh, that’s right – I have!), but oh well.

So I told him to do something, and I’d take his picture. He decided he wanted to scale the kitchen doorway. As that’s always entertaining, I told him I was waiting.

His first attempt (and mine) was a total failure. The next one was slightly better, but nearly ended with a smooshed Cricket. His third attempt went better (and Cricket – and Thumper, who refuses to be left out of the fun – got a lecture about not running under Bubbles when he was trying to climb the woodwork), but still sent him sliding back down to the floor. And since all those pictures turned out blurry (either in whole or in part), I’m declining to share, even though Bubbles and I got a pretty good laugh out of them.

At long last, though, he managed to climb to the top of the doorway. I got my picture, he got down, no one got hurt. Yay!

Photo 365 #166: The Dentist

January 20, 2015January 21, 20154 Comments

Too bad I prefer Aquafresh to Crest…

I had a dentist appointment this morning. I hate going to the dentist. He’s very friendly, all his staff are lovely, and I have pretty good teeth. Why, then, should I loathe these visits so much?

The cleanings drive me nuts.

Some people shiver at the sound of a dentist’s drill. I shiver (and cringe and tense up) at the sound of the hygienist scraping the plaque off my teeth. By the time she’s finished, my hands are tired and sore, my shoulders are wrecked, and I have a raging headache.

And that’s with my normal (read: preferred) hygienist.

The one I had today…

Photo 365 #165

January 19, 2015January 21, 20154 Comments

Since I’ve been moaning about the state of the snow round these parts, I figured a picture of it might be appropriate:

snow

Believe it or not, this is the pretty snow. The ugly snow is completely black and fills the ditches along my commute. Yuck.

How’s winter treating you?

Photo 365 #164

January 18, 2015January 17, 20158 Comments

Yesterday Seymour stopped in at the local second-hand shop to see what they had for sale. I couldn’t believe what he found:

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary puzzle. At first glance, I was unimpressed. But then he turned the box over:

This was an anniversary gift for my grandparents. I didn’t remember it, which is unremarkable since I was six in 1990, but there’s no mistaking my grandmother’s handwriting. What are the odds that Seymour would stop in the day they had this puzzle out for sale, and that he would find it?

Apparently the cashier was unimpressed by the amazingness of this coincidence. It appears that my grandparents donated the puzzle to the local library once they finished it, which I suppose explains how it eventually ended up at the second-hand shop. I wonder if it still has all one thousand pieces…

Have you ever experienced a coincidence like this? Tell me all about it in the comments! 🙂